Huge KCMO/KCK Blunder (Kansas City, St. Louis: live, parking, metro area)

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by James Bond 007

Sometimes I think KCMO should change its name just to avoid the constant confusion. Before I moved here I had no idea how many people were unaware that Kansas City (the main one) is in Missouri rather than Kansas. I thought it was common knowledge. My first inkling came when a co-worker in my last job in the Seattle area mentioned to someone that I was moving to Kansas, which I had to correct him about. Since I have moved here, I can't believe how many times I've had to tell one person or another that I live in Missouri, not Kansas. Even in this very forum I recently had to tell someone here that Kansas City is in Missouri, not Kansas.

It had the name first, before even the Kansas Territory.

My suggestion, which would be especially appropriate with the Unified Government in place, would be for Kansas City, Kansas, to revert to the name of the oldest of the five cities that combined to form it in the 1880s: Wyandotte.

Besides, I understand that some KCK residents use a shortened version of that word to refer to the city they live in now.

[rwiksell]

Originally Posted by springfieldcollegealum

You all are much better researchers and more knowledgeable than the actual book author. Just sayin....

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.

[springfieldcollegealum]

My statement was not sarcastic. It's obvious the posters know much more about the area than the author. The prior sentence is also not sarcastic. I am being complimentary.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by springfieldcollegealum

My statement was not sarcastic. It's obvious the posters know much more about the area than the author. The prior sentence is also not sarcastic. I am being complimentary.

It's obvious that people living in a city would know more about a city they live in than some out of town author. And it's obvious that most people that live outside of KC (even in the midwest) don't realize the "big city" or historic urban core of KC is on the Missouri side. But this doesn't make sense. At all.

It's almost as if the person knows better, but is purposely promoting KCK for some reason. Even though most people do not know that most of metro KC and nearly all of its attractions and culture are on the Missouri side, after about five minutes of research you are going to figure it out.

To do this much research on KCK and not mention the actual top destinations people actually would want to see in KC is just freaking weird. You would have to go out of your way to avoid KCMO in order to put this together. Most people that mistakenly think the real KC is in Kansas will also name off KC's top attractions as being in Kansas as well. The Plaza, the Chiefs, the Royals, Worlds of Fun, KCI, Union Station, Crown Center, the Nelson, P&L District, Crown Center, KC Zoo, Starlight, Truman Library, River Market, WW1 Museum, Westport etc. You just can't miss all that.

The only thing I can think of is the author was probably going to do cities specific to each state, but they ran out of pages to do KCMO or something. I mean, the front page of the book has Union Station on it.

I don't think anybody in the history of visiting KC has ever come to KCK and toured it alone. That would just be bizarre. That would be like going to Camden and not setting foot in Philly, but saying you visited Philly. Like KCK, Camden has a few tourist attractions. But you are NOT seeing Philly in the slightest when visiting Camden other than seeing the skyline across the river. Same with KCK.

[rwiksell]

Originally Posted by kcmo

It's obvious that people living in a city would know more about a city they live in than some out of town author. And it's obvious that most people that live outside of KC (even in the midwest) don't realize the "big city" or historic urban core of KC is on the Missouri side. But this doesn't make sense. At all.

It's almost as if the person knows better, but is purposely promoting KCK for some reason. Even though most people do not know that most of metro KC and nearly all of its attractions and culture are on the Missouri side, after about five minutes of research you are going to figure it out.

To do this much research on KCK and not mention the actual top destinations people actually would want to see in KC is just freaking weird. You would have to go out of your way to avoid KCMO in order to put this together. Most people that mistakenly think the real KC is in Kansas will also name off KC's top attractions as being in Kansas as well. The Plaza, the Chiefs, the Royals, Worlds of Fun, KCI, Union Station, Crown Center, the Nelson, P&L District, Crown Center, KC Zoo, Starlight, Truman Library, River Market, WW1 Museum, Westport etc. You just can't miss all that.

The only thing I can think of is the author was probably going to do cities specific to each state, but they ran out of pages to do KCMO or something. I mean, the front page of the book has Union Station on it.

I don't think anybody in the history of visiting KC has ever come to KCK and toured it alone. That would just be bizarre. That would be like going to Camden and not setting foot in Philly, but saying you visited Philly. Like KCK, Camden has a few tourist attractions. But you are NOT seeing Philly in the slightest when visiting Camden other than seeing the skyline across the river. Same with KCK.

I was hoping you'd write something like this. You're taking the words out of my mouth.

If I can get into the author's head at all, it's this: Based on the list of cities, she's obviously trying to represents almost every state. She may have started out trying to do one from each state at the beginning, but then switched gears when she realized she had to include 2 from California, 2 from Texas, 2 from Pennsylvania and 2 from Florida. One might ask, why not Wichita to represent Kansas, since its the biggest city in the state. But more people actually live on the Kansas side of the KC metro than live in Wichita, so she figured she should do KCK instead. But then she got stuck just researching KCK-only stuff, and not even including Johnson County. It's a stretch, I know. But it's all I can figure.

[boxus]

Even Joe Montana got it wrong.

[James Bond 007]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

My suggestion, which would be especially appropriate with the Unified Government in place, would be for Kansas City, Kansas, to revert to the name of the oldest of the five cities that combined to form it in the 1880s: Wyandotte.

I've thought of that too, but I don't think it would solve the problem. Most people who think Kansas City is in Kansas, from my experience, don't even know there are 2 Kansas Cities. If you changed KCK to Wyandotte, when you told people you live in Kansas City they would still think you were from Kansas. The problem is that the city seems to be named after the state, so either Kansas City (MO) would have to change its name, or the state of Kansas would have to change its name.

[kcmo]

This graphic is correct. The Kansas side is just well, you know.... KC is all about the Missouri side!

Saw this on kc reddit today.

[rwiksell]

Originally Posted by kcmo

This graphic is correct. The Kansas side is just well, you know.... KC is all about the Missouri side!

Saw this on kc reddit today.

This is a fun bit of history, but honestly? It's hideous. From both a map-nerd and a design-nerd perspective.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by kcmo

This graphic is correct. The Kansas side is just well, you know.... KC is all about the Missouri side!

Saw this on kc reddit today.

I was a summer reporting intern at The Kansas City Star when that graphic appeared in the paper.

The only one the paper ever hired out of high school.

Oops! Sorry. That wasn't a graphic that ran in the Star.

But yeah, what rwiksell said.